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ABSTRACT Understanding quenching mechanisms in low-mass galaxies is essential for understanding galaxy evolution overall. In particular, isolated galaxies are important tools to help disentangle the complex internal and external processes that impact star formation. Comparisons between quenched field and satellite galaxies in the low-mass regime offer a substantial opportunity for discovery, although very few quenched galaxies with masses below $$M_{\star }\, \sim \, 10^{9} {\rm M}_{\odot }$$ are known outside the virial radius, Rvir, of any host halo. Importantly, simulations and observations suggest that an in-between population of backsplash galaxies also exists that may complement interpretations of environmental quenching. Backsplash galaxies – like field galaxies – reside outside the virial radius of a host halo, but their star formation can be deeply impacted by previous interactions with more massive systems. In this paper, we report the concurrent discovery of a low-mass ($$M_{\star }\, \sim \, 10^{7} {\rm M}_{\odot }$$) quenched galaxy approximately 1Rvir in projection from the M81 group. We use surface brightness fluctuations (SBF) to investigate the possibility that the new galaxy, dw0910+7326 (nicknamed Blobby), is a backsplash galaxy or a more distant field galaxy. The measured SBF distance of $$3.21\substack{+0.15 +0.41 \\-0.15 -0.36}$$ Mpc indicates that Blobby likely lies in the range 1.0 < R/Rvir < 2.7 outside the combined M81–M82 system. Given its distance and quiescence, Blobby is a good candidate for a backsplash galaxy and could provide hints about the formation and evolution of these interesting objects.
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There and back again: Understanding the critical properties of backsplash galaxies
ABSTRACT Backsplash galaxies are galaxies that once resided inside a cluster, and have migrated back outside as they move towards the apocentre of their orbit. The kinematic properties of these galaxies are well understood, thanks to the significant study of backsplashers in dark matter-only simulations, but their intrinsic properties are not well-constrained due to modelling uncertainties in subgrid physics, ram pressure stripping, dynamical friction, and tidal forces. In this paper, we use the IllustrisTNG300-1 simulation, with a baryonic resolution of Mb ≈ 1.1 × 107 M⊙, to study backsplash galaxies around 1302 isolated galaxy clusters with mass 1013.0 < M200,mean/M⊙ < 1015.5. We employ a decision tree classifier to extract features of galaxies that make them likely to be backsplash galaxies, compared to nearby field galaxies, and find that backsplash galaxies have low gas fractions, high mass-to-light ratios, large stellar sizes, and low black hole occupation fractions. We investigate in detail the origins of these large sizes, and hypothesize their origins are linked to the tidal environments in the cluster. We show that the black hole recentring scheme employed in many cosmological simulations leads to the loss of black holes from galaxies accreted into clusters, and suggest improvements to these models. Generally, we find that backsplash galaxies are a useful population to test and understand numerical galaxy formation models due to their challenging environments and evolutionary pathways that interact with poorly constrained physics.
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- PAR ID:
- 10394802
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 520
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 649-667
- Size(s):
- p. 649-667
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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